The number of people visiting Banff National Park rose by 3.4 per cent over last year and to help people get around next summer Parks Canada plans to increase its public transit options.
From April 2017 to the end of January, 3.4 million people visited Canada’s oldest national park. That number is expected to increase once final attendance numbers for February and March are included, however, officials expect the average annual increase to remain relatively unchanged.
“That’s a little less than the five-year average, the five-year average is closer to five per cent,” said Greg Danchuk, visitor experience manager for Banff National Park.
To help move the masses, Parks Canada will add a bus route from Banff to Johnston Canyon and Roam will add a second bus on its route to Lake Minnewanka.
“We want to have more people using transit, whether it’s to the park or within the park,” said Danchuk, adding they are aiming to have the service in place by the May long weekend.
The new transit route will compliment bus routes introduced last summer from Banff to Lake Minnewanka and from Banff to Lake Louise. A regional bus route from Calgary with stops in Canmore and Banff was also introduced last year by On-It transit and is expected to continue.
According to the Town of Banff, 280,000 people used Parks Canada’s transit options last year and another 11,000 people used the bus service from Calgary during the summer months.
In addition to the new routes, Danchuk said Roam will offer free bus services from all of the campgrounds into town, however, visitors will have to pay to get back to their site.
“We want to try and make this as seamless as possible. We want more people leaving their car wherever it may be, whether it be in Calgary or, at least if you get here, leave it at your hotel,” said Danchuk. “Everybody who stays here overnight has a parking spot.”
He said it’s hard to say why attendance numbers didn’t hit the five-year average, but suspects people didn’t visit as often and free admission to Canada’s national parks in 2017 didn’t have as large an impact as they had expected for parks like Banff.
“It shows that this probably isn’t price sensitive, people want to come here,” said Danchuk.
He said the biggest increase came from regional visitors within a two-hour drive of the park.
“Most of our growth has been in day use,” said Danchuk.
Richard Dupuis, visitor experience manager for Yoho, Kootenay and Lake Louise, described the increase in visitors to Lake Louise and Moraine Lake as the “Instagram effect.”
“I think what Lake Louise and Moraine Lake are facing is the Instagram effect. They’re seeing that in all beautiful places, where it’s iconic. People want to go to that place and take their picture at that same exact location and we’ve been seeing a higher increase, I think, in the Lake Louise area than we have in other areas,” said Dupuis.
Back in Banff, Danchuk said Parks also had an increase in campground reservations last year.
“Last year we had 64 days in a row we were over 100 per cent full,” said Danchuk.
Despite visitation numbers being lower than expected, he said he fully expects numbers to rebound closer to that five-year average next year.
Across the country, he said, visitation was up by about 11 per cent, particularly at historic sites located near urban centres.
